COLLEGE STATION — Young men in maroon helmets will sprint onto Kyle Field on Aug. 31 for Texas A&M's season opener against Rice. Seventy-one days later, men in hard hats will scoot up Kyle Field, with their own considerable weight to bear trying to please Aggies everywhere.

Both are big reasons this has shaped up as the most anticipated football year in A&M history. The team, 11-2 last season behind coach Kevin Sumlin and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel, likely will open the season in the top five for the first time in 18 years.

A massive construction crew, meanwhile, will begin a $425 million renovation Nov. 10, a day after the Aggies wrap up their home slate, with the idea of making A&M's venerable football home for more than a century one of the best in the nation. A&M has not announced an intended capacity for Kyle, which currently holds about 90,000.

“This is probably the largest project ever done at Texas A&M,” university president R. Bowen Loftin said of the undertaking that will be completed in stages while the Aggies still play all of their home games at Kyle.

And now, pictures of what fans might expect are leaking onto the Internet, while A&M released a lone rendering of the east (student) side facade.

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Go to our Aggies blog for more artist renderings of the Kyle Field renovation project.

Jason Cook, A&M's vice president of marketing, said the university released the rendering “to illustrate the potential changes to the east side, which we surveyed students to financially support on Wednesday.” He added with a caveat, “The image was conceptual, not finalized.”

Still, it's likely pretty close to the final product, with tweaks here and there on the mammoth undertaking expected to last about three years.

A&M has never been known as an architecturally inspired campus, but that's changed in recent years with some eye-catching additions along University Drive. It began changing athletically a year ago with the opening of baseball's Blue Bell Park on the same site as old Olsen Field.

As for Kyle Field? Former students have long kidded the three-deck monstrosity is a nod to classic Soviet architecture, but based on the renderings that's about to change.

“We love being inside Kyle Field and playing in there, but when you walk up to it, there's not much attractive about it, is there? It's concrete,” Loftin said with a smile. “We're going to dress it up very nicely.”

Outside of a classic brick facade with a bevy of arches, the updated area around Kyle is expected to feature plenty of scenic green plaza areas, with a sprinkling of reminders of A&M sports past and present in a slick indoor plaza beneath the west side.

“It's a way to celebrate some really great moments in athletic history here,” Loftin said. “Kyle Field doesn't have a place to do that very well right now. By putting in the right kinds of plazas — the west side is pretty dismal right now — we can celebrate who we are much more effectively.

“You'll walk in there and be able to feel the past and present of this campus in a very tangible way, then you go into the stadium and watch it all happen. What better way to watch a football game?”